Name: Nancy S. Wikarski

Illinois Connection

The author earned her PhD from the University of Chicago.

Biographical and Professional Information

After earning her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Nancy Wikarski became a computer consultant and then turned to writing mysteries and alternative history fiction. Her short stories have appeared in ''Futures Magazine'' and ''DIME Anthology'', while her book reviews have been featured in ''Murder: Past Tense'' and ''Deadly Pleasures''. She has written the ''Gilded Age Mystery'' series set in 1890s Chicago. The series has received People's Choice Award nominations for best first novel and best historical. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters In Crime.

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Selected Titles At Your Library

In 1894, as labor strikes threaten to tear Chicago apart, the corpse of a factory girl is found floating in the Chicago River. The factory owner insists it was an accident. Our detectives think it was murder. So does a mysterious figure who believes murder and blackmail go hand in hand and that one good murder always leads to another.

Cassie Forsythe's checkered resume never included the job of babysitter. Former college freshman, yes. Amateur relic hunter, certainly. Seer for a secret organization, absolutely. But babysitter? Not likely! Cassie is packing for the next leg of a treasure hunt to recover a mythological artifact known as the Sage Stone when trouble comes knocking at her door. Trouble takes the form of fourteen year old runaway Hannah Curtis. Hannah isn't your average teenager. She happens to be the youngest wife of aged polygamist Abraham Metcalf. Metcalf leads the religious cult known as the Blessed Nephilim and he covets the Sage Stone for himself.

Gilded Age heiress Evangeline LeClair leads a paradoxical life. By day, she fends off marriage-minded suitors. By night, she teaches English to factory workers at a social settlement in the slums. Evangeline is quite satisfied with the status quo until murder disrupts her routine. When one of her students, a penniless immigrant named Elsa, has been murdered in Chicago's most exclusive hotel, Evangeline sets out to discover who is responsible and why.

In a nightmare, nineteen year old Cassie Forsythe sees her sister attacked by a man in a cowboy hat who demands something called the key. Her nightmare mutates into reality before the night is over. Cassie is called to identify her sister's body--murdered exactly as her dream foretold. She learns that her sister led a double life--retrieving artifacts for a secret organization called the Arkana. The Arkana's leader, an elder named Faye, explains that her group performs alternative archaeology--the kind that defies mainstream history. They uncover proof of peace-loving lost civilizations which predate patriarchy, salvaging the vestiges of divine mother goddess cultures around the globe.

College freshman Cassie Forsythe never set out to be a relic hunter. Her life unravels when her sister is murdered over a stone artifact called the Granite Key. The girl allies herself with a secret society called the Arkana who want to recover the key and find the killer. Teamed with librarian Griffin and bodyguard Erik, Cassie travels to the Minoan ruins of Crete to crack the key's code. There they discover that five artifacts need to be recovered in sequence to reveal the location of a powerful relic called the sage stone. Learning this vital piece of information almost costs Cassie and company their lives when they are attacked on Crete by operatives of a religious cult called the Blessed Nephilim.